Viewing the Tournament Brackets If You Don't Own Excel

The tournament brackets are XLS or XLSX files. If you don't own Excel,
download and install the free Microsoft Excel app from the "app store" of your computer or mobile device.

Balanced Elimination Tournament Design

In the basic double and triple elimination formats that I've seen,
there is a problem where the single player who comes out of the top
(winner's) bracket does not play until a single opponent comes out of
the bottom (loser's) bracket or brackets. With 8 players, the no-losses
player skips 2 rounds of play in the double elimination tournament and 5
to 6 rounds of play in the triple elimination. Therefore, a player who
loses his first one or two games must play several more games to get to
the championship than the player who wins his first few games, and
spectators are deprived of getting to see possibly the best player
participate in the tournament as much as his opponents.

In an attempt to improve the situation with multiple-elimination
tournaments, I designed these 'balanced' tournaments with these ideas:

Players with different numbers of losses can play each other at
any point. That complicates the brackets because it's not always
known ahead of time whether a loser moves on or is eliminated, but
that issue can be handled neatly by using 'if necessary' games.

No player shall sit idle for more than one round consecutively.

Even out how often each player plays each other player as much
as is practical. Avoid immediate replays.

Correctness of the Tournament Bracket Diagrams

I've checked the diagrams for accuracy and playability, and on the
triple and quadruple elimination diagrams I've run computer simulations.
However, errors may remain. Before using one of these bracket diagrams
for your tournament, you should run through it a few times on paper,
flipping a coin for the result of each game. And you can run through it
making a specific player always win or always lose. Please contact me if
you find an error.

Contact: czaptournamentdesignorg

Last updated: 15 Mar 2018

About this Webpage

Since I put up this webpage in 2007, I've received a few dozen e-mails from people in several different countries who are using these tournament designs and from people interested in the design of tournaments. The formats have been used for billiards, backgammon, baseball, volleyball, table tennis, pinewood derby, RPG, and rock climbing tournaments. Some e-mails were critical and some had helpful suggestions.

From correspondance I've received, I see how important it is to tournament organizers to have formats accomdating any odd or even number of participants, depending on how many sign up ahead of time, or how many show up on the day of the tournament. I've posted brackets for every number of starting players from 3 to 20.

The brackets were originally PDF documents with a compact arrangement. Users requested Excel documents with the brackets spaced to allow player names to be typed in as the tournament progresses, so I replaced them with Excel versions. Another advantage of using Excel is that a user can change column width and text font and can print to fit any paper size or tiled sheets.

In the original tournament designs posted here, in the triple elimination designs, the last 2 or 3 rounds were made double elimination in order to simplify and shorten the brackets. In the double elimination designs, the final game was single elimination. This practice was criticized, I agreed with the criticism, and the designs now posted are purely double, triple, or quadruple elimination throughout.

I've received some criticism that, in certain situations in a late round of certain brackets, it is advantageous to lose a game in order to skip ahead to a later round. However, I believe that in practice it is never an advantage to lose a game in these kinds of elimination tournaments.

Boardgame Tournament

Boardgames are challenging to design a tournament for because there are up to six players per game and there are often ties for finishing order. I've developed an elimination design for boardgames that play well with 5, 4, or 3 players. And I've written a program that you can use as a tool to help run the tournament.